Twitter Finally Announces its New Advertising API

Just as Facebook is well on the road to ad-creep on your mobile and desktop feeds, it looks like Twitter is following the slippery slope, moving on from promoted tweets to adverts served thanks to its new API.

Bring on the Adverts

We've managed with the odd promoted tweet from Twitter for a couple of years now, but that was never going to be enough for a company on the road to IPO/megabucks, advertising was going to come into play eventually.

Claiming some 200 million users, following their friends, celebrities and the #hashtag memes of the day, the company in a new blog post, says it aims to provide better ads for users, not more ads. The next phase of that approach is on the way with the new API for developers, starting off with partners like Adobe, Hootsuite and Salesforce who can offer adverts to their clients for us to enjoy.

The company also says that its Twitter Certified Products Program is being updated to include advertising products. New ad products will roll out in the coming months to improve marketing efficiency and ROI. We have to wonder, with some 80% of users accessing Twitter on mobile (according to a recent Twitter U.K. survey), how much relevance it can muster, using location-based services and other methods.

We'll Be Right Back...

For marketers, this move forward means they will soon be able to work the those ad partners to create and manage Twitter Ad campaigns, with the usual dashboard management as part of their overall online campaigns. That's a leap beyond the usual promoted accounts and tweets (below) and will focus more on product over brand.

For users, expect just a small intrusion into your Twitter feeds, whatever the app or device you're using. The company seems set to keep things low-key for now as it aims to monetize all those hundreds of millions of users (and growing). There's no sign of updated mobile apps or changes yet, so expect things to roll out slowly over the weeks.